If memory serves me correctly I first came across le Gray's work at the V & A, and fell in love instantly...How to make a cliche image stand apart from those soulless holiday snaps that always fail to recreate and capture the expanse of space, the beauty of a moment forever lost - see the sea landscapes of le Gray .A testament to overcoming the postcard tainted image rendering a nostalgic and painterly tone to moments meant to take and retake one's breath away....

Further points that reverberate, repeat and rear their ugly heads - question of forced, false aesthetics. Questions of senstaionalist images that on the surface entice viewers but lack the truth and unforced narratives that only the greats can achieve. The emotion is somehow missing. The mood is somewhat too contrived and I believe this is where, in the long run they will cease to be, cease to prevail. For these are the fads of the modern aesthetic, for the all too empty and shallow viewer. They overpower, their arrogance overshadows the reversed and subtle approach. Full of vainglory, surfaces that shout, qui n'ont rien a voir avec la verite.. .

Monday, 14 June 2010

'Art isn't about perfection. Before cameras, travelers sketched so that they could record what they saw on trips, as souvenirs, in the same way that bourgeois families, in the days before recordings, used to listen to music by making it themselves at home on the piano or singing in the parlour. There was a more intimate connection between the amateur musician or artist and the professional, because amateurs had firsthand experience. What's lost today is not just the accidental masterpiece but also that sense of art not as a remote commodity but as something we all make.